New Delhi: A large number of real money gamers said they are likely to play less after the government’s decision to impose a steep 28% goods and services tax (GST) on gamers.
According to a new ‘State of India Gaming’ report by Lumikai published in collaboration with Google, released on Thursday, 60% of those surveyed said that this change will affect how much they play on the tax deducted at source (TDS). Lumikai is a gaming and interactive entertainment venture fund.
In September, Mint reported that the finance ministry’s revenue department notified the new tax rate through an amendment to the Goods and Services Tax Principal Act, 2017 after the 51st meeting of the GST Council which recommended a 28% tax rate on income gross online gambling businesses. . This has increased from 18% previously to 28%.
The report said that the tax demand exceeds the revenue of the gaming sector as the value of ads served for a period between FY18 and FY23 was $8.9 billion compared to the revenue of $4 billion. He said that government policies have established separate legislation and taxation between games with cash-based results and games with non-cash results.
Also, funding in the gaming sector fell by 75% year on year in 2023, reflecting the global decline of 79%. This figure was $156 million in 2018 and reached its peak of $1,744 million in 2021, falling more than threefold to $567 million in 2022.
But chances are the sector is still growing as there were around 15.4 billion gaming downloads in FY23, making India one of the largest gaming markets in the world. There are over 568 million gamers in the country – more than 50% of all Indian internet users. Today there are approximately 140 million gamers paying users, an increase of 17% year on year compared to last year.
Approximately 50% of the players are within the age group of 18 to 30 years, with a male to female ratio of approximately 60:40. The report said the increase in the number of gamers from non-metro cities rose to 66% in FY23 from 57% in the previous fiscal. About 62% of users said that UPI is their preferred payment method for games.
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Updated: 02 November 2023, 04:01 IST
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